Analysis of Genetic and Genomic Data

Analysis of Genetic and Genomic Data

The purpose of this course is to provide practical training in computational analysis of genetics and genomic data to accompany the theoretical training in Bio/MMBio/PWS 468. The course is designed for non-bioinformatics students and is divided into 2 parts: an introduction to coding, statistics, and graphics analysis in R; and applied training in genomics techniques. Because of the central importance of communicating primary findings in any scientific field students will create several short “mini-manuscripts” (600-1000 words each) that center around a central analysis, including an introduction, methods, results, graphical figure or table, and discussion sections. Also, students will submit their writing twice during the semester for peer review by their classmates and instructor. To support students in accomplishing all tasks, the course is designed around weekly homework assignments that require the students to perform the required analyses on small, sample datasets provided by the instructor, and then to work in their own time or with the TA support to analyze different datasets independently. PWS 470 is meant to be taken concurrently with Bio/MMBio/PWS 468.